"C'est Mkhabez"

 Lyon, June 1984. This morning, my third day here, my "aunt" has run out of patience with my moodiness. Not being especially Catholic, "Cris" does not have Corpus Cristi on her mind when she planned the days events, and we will not be going to Rocheraillée sur Saône, today. Day three, that this 12 year old has been in France without seeing a castle. I'd also, in these three days, witnessed my "aunt" curse out a cabbie, a woman in the market, and her German neighbor - so I feared any disappointment she was having in me. I sat in her kitchen, quiet, petting "Robespierre" - a name that made me chuckle to myself, years later, sitting in World History and learning about The Terrors. 

Please understand, I am paraphrasing when I share Cris' words; it was often a mix of French and English - and only their context has remained. 

"Do you wonder why there are no cousins here to play with?"

Me: "No"

"Babies are little narcissists. Do you know that word?"

Me: "No"

"One day you will, when you are smart enough to understand why we can't go to the castle today. I don't really feel like having my day ruined by either of you - so get in the car."

Cris' disdain for American education was pretty clear to me after day one, when she opted to sit on a bench outside the airport when I arrived. I walked around tiny Satolas Airport for probably half an hour before I exited and found her. The only instruction my mom instilled in me as I left Vegas was "wait for Cris". When I found her, she was seated next to someone I didn't know, reading a book, and smoking a cigarette that was very different than what my dad smoked.

"Rooonnald, did no one teach you how to travel?"

Me: "No"

"I told your mom you could take a taxi, and she said, I should meet you here. I told her she was ridiculous, you are a young man, he can figure it out. But, I'm here, waiting for you - nearly out of cigarettes, and pretending to read this book so this foul man will stop talking to me. Happy? Make sure you tell your mom, we are all happy here."

Me: "Ok"

To be fair, I realize, thus far, I have painted my "aunt" as some opinionated, cynical, French woman; and that really only surfaced when she was annoyed in the moment. The bulk of my visit was the antithesis of these types of encounters - but it provided me clear boundaries under which I was allowed to have her time and space. I've honestly always admired it.

We drove the short distance into Lyon. I stayed quiet the entire drive, staring at a an enormous cathedral that towered over the city. She took notice.

"Would you....." a very long pause while she calculated her wording. "... like to eat some salty biscuits and drink baby blood, or get a pastry?"

I looked at her... my brain, absolutely disabled.

"Neither is a problem, really - you seem to be in a mood that maybe you'd like to be reminded that what you really want is wrong, and as compensation - they'll give you a little snack. Or - we could just get a snack in silence, and it might taste a little better."

I'd be lying if I told you, my brain wanted nothing more than to see the inside of the largest church I'd ever seen in my life. But Cris' sarcasm was a much more daunting threshold, so I said, "Better snack."

Lyon was mostly void of people - it was the middle of the week, middle of the day; but it looked like a Sunday morning. Her car sounded like it was tearing itself apart as she navigated narrowing cobbled streets... it was a plausible excuse for the lack of communication. We entered a part of Lyon where people were out, a handful of fruit/bread vendors; business doors open to the sidewalks, noticeably a different demographic than I had seen in my previous 2 days. The car slowed as we smacked into the curb, followed by the most distinctive sound of her emergency brake I had heard before or since; my brain recorded it for posterity. The curb is too high to allow me to open my door, and the smack of it against stone resulted in a glance I'd not yet seen from Cris. She only motioned at her side of the car, suggesting that I'd crossed that bridge between disappointment where words failed her.

I barely had a moment to consume the edifice of the three-story building in front of me. On the floors above, balconies wore evocative greenery, nurtured by freshly washed garments. Of particular note to my gaze was a silky, black negligee. A sense of arousal washed over me as I traced the outline of collecting water drops illuminated in brilliant light as they released their grasp from lace edges and crashed in echoing din upon pottery and concrete. As Cris opened the door - a flood of sweet and unfamiliar odors spun about me; and sounds from within the patisserie muffled the soundtrack of the wet dream happening above me. I have a distinct recollection of being hit on the shoulder by a water drop, and spending that evening getting lost in the ecstasy of that waterdrops' journey. The floor was composed of one-inch black and white tiles; cracked, bleached, their pattern incomprehensible. One wall was adorned with faded portraits of pastries unfamiliar; seemingly sticky concoctions of dough and fillings that had transformed into muted tans and blacks. There was not enough space between this wall and the display cases for anything more than a handful of mismatched chairs of both wood and metal. No one inhabited this small space but Cris and I - inescapable however, was the clamor of something heavy and metallic rhythmically striking a wall that concealed a space existing behind an exquisitely brilliant, crimson curtain. Beneath this din, a male voice, speaking French but with a much different inflection than I had encountered on this French adventure thus far. I turned to look at Cris, and just as I was about to speak, she motioned for me to be quiet, and she took a seat. Again, just as I ushered words from my diaphragm, she positioned her index finger in front of her lips. Cris sat quietly, watching me carefully; informing the restrictions of my impulses with nothing more than her gaze. She occupied the only chair that set alienated from the others, closest to the door. I wrapped my hand around the chair closest to me, much too heavy to lift, but the kinetic energy had already been spent - and this metal monster of comfort squealed across shattered tiles as I positioned it next to Cris. All existing noise from within the tiny space evaporated into stark silence; followed only by the sounds of boot to floor and then bells sown into the crimson curtain as it was forcibly pulled to one side. Standing there, frozen for a moment was an older man (older than any of the adults in my life anyway) - dressed in black slacks, and a white button down shirt, mirroring one I had seen hanging next to the black fever dream on the balcony. He was not, in the narrowest way that I was able to ascertain, not white, not black. The closest analog my life had presented up to this moment were Greeks I had seen in Tarpon Springs as a child. Tanned, but with a shade that suggested more olive hues... wild, black hair that covered his arms and head. He smiled and moved behind the display case. Cris said something to him in French, and he waved his hand dismissively. 

"What do you want?" - Cris asked with an annoyed glare. 

I reviewed every option, scanning for familiarity, there was none. Cris tolerated this confusion for only seconds before she stated to the man, "Mkhabez, quatre, s'il vous plait." As I watched him collect these smallish yellow pastries, placing them carefully into a bag, I became aware that someone else was standing behind me, quietly, imposingly. Turning my head, a woman about my height, stood about a foot behind me. Same complexion as the man, long black hair, a very ornate and completely black dress to just below her knees, and black nylons - no shoes. She put her hand upon the top of my head, and I noticed the dozen or so silver bracelets that she wore on each wrist. 

"Ça va?" 

I was paralyzed by the depth of black in her eyes. The moment snapped back into reality as the male folded our bag of pastries and handed them to Cris. We exited back to the car, followed by the woman. She had collected the chair that Cris had occupied just moments ago, and sat just outside the shop, watching me climb across the console of Cris' car. As I collapsed into my seat, I looked out the window to see this woman was observing, taking long drags from a cigarette. I wanted to connect her in some way to every moment of this experience, but I was too frightened to look up at that balcony. I cannot explain why, but I believed she was challenging me to do so. Her awareness of the black negligee that beckoned me to imagine something else entirely. Maybe it was the hormones manufacturing these scenarios as I lie in bed later that night. I did not muster even the courage to return her gaze, not even to validate that she was indeed still watching me. The internal explosion of misfiring neurons snuffed seconds later by Cris.

"Do you know what bitterness is?"

Me: "Yes"

"Explain it."

Me: "Sour"

"Oui, quoi d'autre?"

I shrugged. She started the car and drove, without any additional questions or words, back into the part of Lyon devoid of life. Again she parked, striking the curb, pulling back on the emergency brake, again, filling the car with sounds of gnashing metal. We exited the car and sat on a bench bathed in warm sunlight in the Les Cordeliers. She handed me the bag of Mkhabez... still, to me, just a lemon-colored disc with some decoration.

"When you do something you like, maybe you can make yourself feel happy. Maybe that thing makes other things easier. Like maybe a job, or a chore. Maybe you'll live with your happy family in some happy place. Maybe you'll start to dislike it, because this thing becomes mundane, repetitive, or expected of you. This 'thing' becomes the only skill you own to manufacture this 'happy place'. This is also bitterness. 'Sour' like a lemon, but it does not fade. It gets stronger, and more bitter, until you no longer like it's taste."   

"Do you know this?" "Does it make sense?"

Me: "I think so?"

"Did anyone teach you this?"

Me: "No"

"I was upset at you this morning, you embarrassed me at the patisserie. Do you know this treat, mkhabez?"

Me: "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make you mad. No, I don't know what this is."

"Do you think it's 'bitter' or sweet?"

Realizing that this was a "teaching moment", honestly, the only one I had experienced outside of school, I replied, "bitter".

"That's interesting, Roooonnald. Eat your pastry and tell me again."

 I placed the entire mkhabez onto my tongue, flavor flooded my mouth and I instantly could not control my salivation. It slowly dissolved and I experienced nutty flavors and spices I didn't know. I quickly ate a second one, and restrained myself from the third. It was a glorious sensation of flavor that immediately inscribed itself into my synapses until I'm dead and gone. I rolled the bag closed and put it on the bench between Cris and I.

She asked, "Bitter?"

Me: "No"

"Do you think the boulonger likes or loves his choices?"

Me: "Loves".

"I wonder what the people on that hill you stared at all the way here think about their salty biscuits and baby blood?"

Me: "I don't know?"

"Exactement. What you choose to love is yours alone. It won't look like anyone else's love. But it should never look like you looked at me this morning. I gave you a choice, but you tried to manipulate me into only one, that is not love. What should we do now?"

Elsewhere in Europe during this time, ironically enough:

When the Bough Breaks

 In the coming weeks, I will be looking for an opening, upon which I will reach for a conscience that I'm not sure exists. My only confidence that it may even be worth the endeavor, is that a parent-child relationship must (should) supersede anything else. Stories I've read, suggests, that it's not a certainty, but I am prepared for that outcome... I think. Maybe, trying to articulate this while I have the flu and my brain soaks in a pool of fever, withdrawals, and emotion, isn't my best effort. I spent an hour telling someone what they mean to me last night while awash in tears. I'm not a crier - but I was last night.

The bones of this relationship, at least from my perspective, have been incapable of supporting the weight of a normalcy. The foot on my throat emerged before I was even in school. The first indication that I was not my parent's child arrived in racist overtones... a disparaging of strangers that made absolutely no sense in a world of so much diversity. I may have been three, but I understood being hated because of how you looked didn't align with anything I understood about morality, decency, or "being a good neighbor". The backseat, back-handed slaps ensured I understood that respect is fostered under an alignment of ideals. If any parental guilt existed as a result of the physical abuse my father inflicted upon me; it was never uttered. Ever. 

Then the sexual abuse began at the whims of a "family friend" entrusted with my safety. A fact that wasn't shared with my parents until much later in life. In fact, it was something that I had buried so deep within my brain, I wouldn't come to face it until I was a young adult. Truly, I couldn't tell you how I said it, or more importantly, what the reaction was. My ex-wife is likely the only person who could tell that story with any clarity (and truth) - because I had fully left my body. One fact I did walk away with, was that my mom had also been abused as a child. 

I'm sitting here writing these words, and I am reflecting on people that have fully cut parents out of their lives; and it does not feel so alien. It feels like strength... I don't have.

So, I, a young child, physically abused for lashing out at words like "nigger", sexually abused for being available to someone with predilections for young boys - somehow I developed into an empathetic nihilist, and coward. Unwilling to end my path, only accepting the machinations of fate to do it for me. How was I as a kid? To use my dad's succinct phrasing, "cautious". I lived inside myself, unattached to anyone that I believed only wanted me conditionally. I often wonder, how did adults perceive me as a kid - you know, the ones that maybe taught me, maybe met me - did they see me as fractured as I perceived myself? If they did, they did not intervene. Some, in fact, took it upon themselves to "toughen me up" - once fracturing my ribs, another time, dislocating both of my thumbs. That guy, he gave me one of those pressure bars that you hold straight out in front of your body and attempt to push the ends towards one another. One Sunday, that left my hands at terminal velocity through my bedroom window, and I was grounded for a month, no TV, no comics, no friends.

I tended to navigate around "nerds" - because being smart was maybe something I could do well? It was always a small group of probably equally insecure kids. I found a photo the other day of one of my rare birthday parties, and sitting on the floor was a collection of gangly children - my few friends - a Russian, a kid from Oman (Omanian?), Asian, black, and one other white kid. I hope somehow, I managed to make the adults in my house terribly uncomfortable that day. I doubt I had any sense of rebellion at that age, but I clearly felt free enough outside of my parent's confines to be who I wanted to be among people I wanted to be around.

Another odd fact about me, though I am a little embarrassed to admit - is that I was a very sexual child. I guess I know why. I was masturbating, probably by 5 - I didn't know why, or how it began, but it felt good. Maybe it was the only control I felt over my body without fully understanding the dynamics of sexuality. I was caught, often - and it went as one might think it went. It all came to a head (no pun intended) when my dad invited his friends over, and they brought their daughter along to play with me. I was likely 7-ish, and she was maybe 10? She didn't have much interest in comic books, or Hot Wheels - so all I had left to share was this thing I figured out - masturbation. Neither of us were naked, we did not touch one another, but the sensations were the same. And yes, my mom caught us. I never saw her again. I was also notoriously kissing classmates in the bushes outside our kitchen window - another thing I was terrible at hiding.

Life found a unique way to combat the notions of having friends, or someone to kiss, or stability. We'd move every couple of years. If not to a new state, at least to a new neighborhood. New school, new people, new stresses. It wasn't until I was older that I understood the circumstances precipitating these relocations - and it's not for reasons that everyone assumes whenever they ask me, "where are you from?" In a pre-internet world, it was one of the steps you take to evade law enforcement. Predicated on the assuming the identity of someone who died at birth. A masterclass in criminality for the so-inclined. Again, I was a child, all I understood was that the challenges of even making friends in the first place was increasingly, not worth the energy. A self-starter isolationist before I was 10.

None of us are so naïve or media-illiterate to understand what happens to an abused, isolated, fragile person upon granting of self-exploration. You can fabricate a tiny human to fear everything, to hate what your principles - but if you are unwilling to exert some sort of control over them as a teenager out of whatever misguided definition of love you cling to; you are likely to foster the type of person that has zero comprehension of manipulation, unconditional love, or measures of excess. You arrive at a broken human with an understanding of life pulled from media and books. A rinse and repeat of experiences both good and bad to shape and more importantly, mimic, "normalcy". You fuck all the wrong people; you ingest all the taboos, you become selfish, narcissistic, validated, incarcerated, dead then awake, married with the emotional awareness of a teenager, unmarried, poor as a result of all your "adult" life decisions, radicalized with beliefs, and then someone who writes all this on a blog that no one reads. Not as a cautionary tale, as someone that needs to package this to their parents in such a way to simply lead them to empathy towards hundreds of children that were victimized by adults via my own reality growing up as their child. To maybe understand why, their child doesn't understand why they would choose the abuser over the abused.

Why now? Simply because they are at the end of their lives. I will never get an apology or gain understanding of their choices... and I'm only starting to come to terms with that. They know the truth, or at least did at the time. They've been playing the game of revisionist history for the past decade like I wasn't there experiencing the same moments. All I have left to encapsulate this relationship of parent/child is the desire to approach their death with empathy. And unfortunately for them, they chose and support one of the cruelest humans that has ever existed; and has done things I will never forgive or forget. I am not asking them to change their beliefs, or have a come to Jesus moment with the religion they like to wear now - but I do need them to understand why I am the way I am and that my experience is nothing compared to what hundreds/thousands of children endured in the control of monsters. If I cannot connect to their empathy for these children by using my own abuse as their child to facilitate it - I cannot bury my parents with empathy. It's simply that. Period. 

Yes, I Have Powers (My Hallowe'en Tale)

 It's true... I am only aware of two, but after years of awareness, I afford them certainties. There may be more and awareness of their presence remains elusive given their method of arrival. Those two I confidently embody are tethered by a very tenuous thread, that perhaps given it's nature, masks many more underwhelming abilities. Like an undulating cloud of starling, my brain sweeps with intrusive thoughts, often plucked from darkness - the whispers of god; the splintering of an unwell host's mind; the musings of a discontent imp; slipping briefly to my consciousness - I can do things. Spectacular, no. Controlled, no. Impressive, maybe - if your cynicism is so paper-thin to allow such fractures in your rationale. Youth left my notions unrestrained; perpetuated on the limitless strangeness that a comic-fueled education afforded. Matured and goth-adled; I took resolve that my bargainings against those that kept my vices and desires behind paywalls left me with unfamiliar scars. Now, as a shattered marionette, I recognize these things as an affect of sickness. Not only my own, but an ancestral wound; the pieces removed from some soul that almost certainly did not live locked away in a 1200 sq ft coffin and instead was challenged daily for not masking their failures; that being the only estate they bequeathed to those further down the twisted branches of their tree. Societally - compensating with our best tools, choosing the paths of least resistance and seemingly acceptable avenues of camouflage. I wonder if they found other skills in our arsenal of mediocrity?

I won't stretch this out. The first power I became aware of... affecting electric light. In particular, street lights. I forget which friend recognized this uncanny phenomenon in me, but I do believe it was the same person that coined it as "sliding"; suggesting this was something they were already familiar with. A handful of people have been with me when this manifests itself, and once started, it cascades for a good while, and if I slide a light, it remains affected by me indefinitely until it is replaced. Perhaps I should have saved this one for last because it is far more impressive than the last.

As a person who has always been a pen to paper kind of soul, I have my favorite types of pens. Very fine point, fluid tip. When I write, especially when I am trying to carve from my ribs something of significance - I will explode the pen. My mind, it's built this lore around these efforts... that deal I made; staining my words, blotting out the truths I managed to pry from it's grasp. The devil's word only my lips can whisper, perhaps.

Again - please recall, these are not controlled events. I could not busk a living on my perfected efforts of exploding pens and sliding lights. These arrive as a thought ripping as if lightning across a moment, and it happens and is gone. The light slides, my tips stain with ink - into darkness; words muted into black. Yes, I have powers... and they seek to return me to nothing.

Helter Skelter

 This will be a quick post; because everyone needs to be reminded, I am autistic and things that are probably obvious, sometimes escape me; especially if those things are tied to an emotion or feeling. As in this example of today's stupid realization that was probably obvious to everyone else.

When Motley Crue released Helter Skelter on Shout At The Devil, that, as much as the imagery, was likely shocking to our parents beyond the "Satanic Panic" crap. Parent's in 1984 would have been aware of The Manson Murders, and the brutality of those crimes. A parent seeing "Shout At The Devil" and it's pentagram cover would have been concerned already, but you throw in the fact that they covered a song most closely associated with those horrific murders, I can imagine that was a little too hard to pacify even those open-minded parents that dismissed the imagery as shock-value previously employed by The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and then Black Sabbath. They would remember that a bunch of murders happened that were particularly evil, those murderers wrote Helter Skelter in their victim's blood at the murder scenes. Also, they might be aware that The Church Of Satan opened a temple in the same San Francisco neighborhoods frequented by Manson. It would be a different thing if The Beatles recorded Helter Skelter post murders, but they indirectly inspired the murders, and now Motley Crue is covering that song that inspired murderers - which to me, takes your cover song to a whole different level of thought.

Am I wrong or too high?

Who are you? (A story about discovering a hole in my brain...)

 This morning provided yet another increasingly difficult hurdle of motivation to get dressed and drive to the office. I emerged from slumber having just spent several moments with Lisa Gerrard and (___). In that dystopian near-future, where I lived in the Appalachian area of either Kentucky or West Virginia; my residence was only loosely what I'd describe as a house. I lived at the base of a small cliff, not directly beneath it, but adjacent, across a small 2-lane road. Trump was still president, and I use "still" in a way suggesting that the idea that there would be anyone other than Trump after these many years was not something anyone thought about anymore, it was just what life was now. So much so, that as Trump spoke to a disenchanted group of 30 or so people on this cliff above me, I could hurl dirt clumps and small rocks in his direction, and no one could be bothered to be concerned. My job seemed to consist of some kind of rock/dirt manipulation to what extent I couldn't say, I didn't care for it, but somehow, the survival it provided left me in better shape than the people up on the cliff. Outside the road-facing side of my home, I plunged a spade into the earth to free grapefruit-sized rocks and clear a large enough area to grow vegetables. Under midday sun, it was uncomfortably hot, but I had little else to do... there was no longer an internet, or television, or even radio... which perhaps makes the following events rather ironic. Walking down from the road that lead to town, I was approach by a woman wearing a Sinead O Connor t-shirt (Lion and the Cobra UK Cover) and a long, white, cotton skirt. She was with a man wearing a plaid sweatshirt with suspenders and unusually fancy pants for the conditions. I recognized them immediately as Lisa Gerrard and (___). I should note, I don't recall if I knew his name in my dream, but more on this in a bit. He asked if I had any water, and I invited them both in, and gave them bottles of ice cold water, which he finished instantly, then asked for another. Lisa only sipped at her water. I offered them food, but they declined. My obvious first question was, "How in the hell are you here?!" Lisa shared that they were on tour on the West Coast when all abroad travel was shutdown, and they have been surviving by traveling however they can to play for whomever is able to see them. Gypsies, or traveling barkers were the only images my brain was able to muster. They had nothing with them, so I imagined, somewhere, a vehicle existed. He asked if they could rest a bit, and I graciously offered them my couches... to which he promptly obliged. Lisa seemed to prefer interaction, and we talked for a good while. She was comfortable, motherly, concerned about my narrative, and her energy was peaceful, and it was a feeling I'd believed no one carried any longer. Lisa opened cabinets and the fridge without hesitation, and she fed herself berries, raisins, and brewed tea, and we talked about music while she did my dishes. She seemed, happy(?) to have these normal tasks to do in an abnormal existence... I started to believe that I could maybe entice them to stay. But as the sky turned crimson, He awoke, and they departed, and I awoke.

It was a Dead Can Dance-like score in something I had watched earlier in the day that invited them to this miserable place, and the inescapable nightmare reality that crafted the rest; but I shared all of this to understand how I got to right now. Throughout my mental checklist of ideas for getting out of driving to work, I was unable to recall His name. "What a weird dream with Lisa and ..." - "why don't I know his name? I've always known his name, and I can't recall a time when I didn't know his name." I've spent the past 3 hours trying to pluck his name from my brain... it's not there. I can hear his voice, see his face, I can see the script in which his name is written on album covers, I can remember the names of every other male that Lisa Gerrard released an album with - but I cannot find the letters of his name; it's gone. As of now, I am refusing to look it up, because I need my brain to produce this information. 

Why does it matter?

I suppose the short answer is fear. As a young adult in my twenties, I began to realize that much of my childhood was a blank to me. My only memories were one's that needed a photograph to precipitate recollection. I've never really been sure if this was trauma-induced blocking of memories, or if it was indicative of something medical. There's no known history of dementia in my family, but I also opted to a more chemical path in life, and that has always been the beast watching me from the forest that I am aware of, but never knowing when it will reveal it's form. Did my bad batch of heroin punch a fucking hole in my brain... poor whatshisname just severed from my synapses and floats in my cerebellum slowly decaying into non-existence. I will spend the rest of this day trying to put his name together, but it feels hopeless, and it's honestly, a bit anxiety-inducing. Because of this dream, I am cognizant of lost knowledge, and I think that's unusual - how often do you recognize what you have forgotten? Did the dream serve as some kind of surrogate narrative to that information leaving my consciousness? It truly feels bizarre, guess I should buy a shovel.

Heroin ("...she's funny that way...")

 Heroin is... similar to a vampire, in the sense, that it is absolutely romanticized and must be invited in; and once that vein is extended, you are an object of whim for the intruder. As a fifteen year old, with a brain not sustained by mediocrity or consumerism, I awaited her invitation with the same fervor as I would a Reese's Cup after an hour in the fridge. She wasn't a creature I sought out, I assumed she would find me if I was to be a host to her ways - the type of restraint I give all aspects of life sans matters of the heart.

My efforts here are not to beguile the curious with tragic fantasies of creative destruction. The journey has been far from anything noteworthy, interesting, or gratifying. A half-dozen overdoses over our 35-year on and off again marriage has dramatically sniped years of life barely worth living. There is no romantic palette by which I have given brush stroke to my genius or tethered my curious ways to a stranger's synapses. I am a shattered frame co-existing with an abusive partner in a day to day framed by regrets of an emerging day and hollowed-out joy until darkness invites me back to another round. Heroin is not my scapegoat, I made the choices that have brought me here, and honestly, she offered me no words taking me in one direction or another. As mentioned, she exists both independent and carrion to my life. 

Let's stroke those notions you have of burning brilliantly with this ravenous muse. Her fascinating ability to be all things, a yin and yang of unlocked treasures and cancerous ruin. She is the Faustian relationship that has given those that nursed at her silver teat such tragic rapport. I've always been taken by the fact that she can be purely white, with a consistency of powdered sugar (China White); and also a craggy, sticky, black base, as if snapped from the caves of Tartarus (Tar Heroin). I often thought in a cartoonish sense - an angel (China White) on one shoulder, and the devil (Tar Heroin) on the other. In between, me, with a complexion similar to the Mexican Heroin that nurtured my generation. China White arrived in Western society as opium, and quickly took bed with Nietzsche, Picasso, Breton, Baudelaire and countless other literary and artistic poster children. It was the Jazz Age muse of choice, and we fondly remember those that offered us such explosive glimpses into their creativity. Less frequently, we dwell on the near collapse of Chinese society, when in the 18th Century, they realized that Heroin was more famine than feast and instead married her away to the much more "forward-thinking" Westerners in exchange for financing their nation. There's a metaphor in there somewhere. The collective ash of those heroes inspired a new generation of left-brained luminaries that ushered in the Lysergic acid diethylamide generation that in an opium-prohibited existence, developed the tar heroin that was as incendiary as an oil sheen on placid surfaces. She slept in the beds of Hendrix, Joplin, Morrison, Hunter S. Thompson - giving path to youthful minds looking to shatter the oppressive realities of endless wars and a political system that stood patriotically on the throats of wayward, directionless, dregs. Again, Heroin disappears into the night having burned her bedfellows to cinders, while also once again doing so in such an intoxicating manner that another generation can do nothing but seek her out to "fix her" and make her a palatable companion in their creative pursuits. Barely mentioned in the dossier of her autobiography is the countless, nameless deaths she ushered. Her affair extended secretly to the very people that maligned her name, brought to our shores, thousands of kilos at a time in exchange for weapons and wars abroad; sold to those wayward, wild-eyed youth. Arriving at my generation, us Gen-Xers, so much apathy and disdain. Our fuses were short by design... emerging into a society that can no longer survive on the income of one parent. I'm not even going to insult you with the list of our luminaries - because their existence is so enshrined with heroin-chic that it has permeated their identity. They are as much defined by heroin as anything they created, there is no separation from artist and muse; we've arrived at the climax of our journey where the vampire no longer lusts after you, she now simply devours and offers you back to the earth. Those finding balance in their relationship with her are few, and wear scars and decay as part of their existence. Perhaps Gen-X was the perfection of her craft; her masterpiece to consumption and creativity; brilliance burning to ash as an homage to disaffected spiritualism and nurtured-decay from birth to grave. Arriving today, the muse is tired, lazy, and only gives effort to feeding. She no longer needs a host to swathe and wax poetic to her ego, she simply lays waste without regard; her legacy defined in centuries of "brilliance", her path now is simply ruin. Heroin will use whatever device necessary to break you at the spine and smother the light from the moment of her kiss; there is no spell, no promises, no graves left for the revered.

Let me apologize for personifying Heroin as a female. As a heterosexual male, it's the manner in which I define it, as a partner with whom I've had my longest, consistent relationship. I'm not intending to draw parallels between women and heroin; just that in the context of my living with heroin, it's been a marriage with binding contracts. 

Now that I have romanticized this muse, and given you the narrowest of representations of her star pupils, let's talk reality. The exchange of "goods" is barely a fair one. It is you that extended the invitation, and you are not without generous resume of her talents. Perhaps, as with most resumes, it's flourish is in the accomplishments, and much thinner in the details. I am not going to lie to you, the snap of your flesh followed by a flood of warmth and the sudden thrust out of your self is beyond what words can define. Depending on your circumstance, that mere moment alone is inescapable, and beckons for a lifetime. And I mean a lifetime - it is a scar that you will wear until your last breath. No amount of methadone, detoxing, life-changing will grant you a reprieve from that sensation. Each and every return to that embrace erodes and begs you to give your full potential to wrap yourself as tightly in that embrace. Your body rots slowly, the only offering such a partner can accept, and if you give her carte blanche, she can be your entire life and meet your every need; because she will be the only thing that matters to you. She is not dissuaded by your love-bombing, cursing of her name, your willingness to do ANYTHING to return to her embrace. Unconditional love. Your best hope of keeping her out of your home is to build as many barriers as you are humanly capable between she and you. Those are the people that will take her full wraith by the efforts you and her will take to reunite. The stack of bodies must be hearty, resilient, worthy, patient beyond human endurance; this is your safe room. The gravity of their love and the risk of their loss is your only weapon in defending yourself from your abusive ex.

This may seem counter-intuitive to your New Jack City education, but the best dealer is the one who also has relationship with your partner. This is especially critical today; it can be the only barometer by which you can trust the product you are about to imbue. As previously mentioned, the consistency, color, presentation of heroin is a full-spectrum and it's impossible to know how pure it is. The poppy that produced the original batch of heroin is sold to an "organization" who then "cut" that heroin and mix it with other "substances" in order to turn one kilo of heroin into two or three kilos. This is how you make profit as the "organization". Now, multiply that process of cutting by however many cooks exist between you and that first batch or pure heroin, likely at least 3 generations, unless you are celebrity - but as we know, need over caution usually results in cutting corners. Hoffman, Michael K Williams are reminders, that today, the landscape gives no reprieve to status. This generation's heroin is cut (mixed) with fentanyl and any host of insane chemical concoctions. Substances so powerful that even minute exposure can arrest the heart in seconds, or eat away your flesh in some type of Romero/Savini fever dream. Buying blind is extremely dangerous now, and getting heroin that won't outright kill you is not a proposition with odds in your favor. Addiction to fentanyl happens so much more regularly and quickly than any iteration of heroin through the ages; it's the best possible outcome of an encounter with the drug that has been cut with fentanyl or other chemicals. If you are chasing some romantic ideals of ghosts or liberated creativity, the odds are infinitesimal that you will find your muse - she is taking your breath without an afterthought. You will be among staggering statistics and left nameless in your brief journey.

Still possibly mesmerized by the prospect? Allow me, if you will, to describe the sensation that arrives with heroin cut with a chemical. The warm rush of leaving your body is slightly altered. Upon popping the tourniquet holding your journey at bay, the blast through your veins is a white-hot fire that feels like your veins are fuses burning to ash, and you have only a moment to wonder if the second this invader hits your brain, if it won't explode as if a firework. The pain is unbearable until that contact when your brain floods with chemicals and the flash of brilliant white is the last cohesive certainty you will have that you are about to die. As I said, you may not die, you may only have a lifetime dependence on cocktails of heroin and household chemicals, or your skin might start decaying and sloughing off from your body. The only relief from this reality is a reintroduction to the incendiary torture you just endured. 

The "Maybe, Just Oncers" - I see you. Let's suspend reality for a moment, in that your first foray with heroin won't include fentanyl or some kind of horse tranquilizer. Can you do it, experience it, and stop? Yes, you could. Let's for argument's sake, take your guilty pleasure, whatever it is, some kind of sexual kink, a food, a beverage, an experience - and I asked you if you could only do that once and never again despite it being prevalent in your life, despite it begging and promising you one more time will be just like the first, and it will feel as good and it will be fine? Again, if you are this person, you likely don't have that dealer we talked about, so you are buying blind and your odds of dodging a bullet are exponentially decreasing each time - but if you can do that and live your life without revisiting that sensation, you are somehow stronger than millions of people who felt the same inner-confidence. 

You might be asking, "what's the aftermath of a perfect pairing with heroin feels like?" That first time, your day after isn't going to feel great. You are likely to spend a good part of your day vomiting and with chills; equivalent to your worst hangover. Again, this is if you got a clean cut of heroin. You and I are living in a utopia right now where reality is suspended. Each subsequent visitations with the drug will give you less euphoria and more sickness; sometimes lasting for days (the sickness that is). There is a fix for that, but I'm afraid it's an ouroboros kind of journey from here on out. Let's assume you transgress from mental addiction to physical addiction. That journey (again, under utopian rules), is three to four passages through the looking glass. I can't speak to smoking or oral consumption of heroin - I know only that's it's effects are lessened and have tempered duration; I don't know if it's any less an addictive path. The OxyContin epidemic would suggest it is not a suitable loophole. What does physical addiction feel like? Assuming again, you've escaped any number or tagalongs in this idealist reality we've constructed, such as AIDS, Hepatitis, Necrosis - you're day to day will feel like a never-ending flu. No appetite, scattered thoughts, unbearable stomach pains that radiate into organs you've never had a "sensation" from before, a diminished mood, and depression. Yes, there is relief from this, and yes, that is more heroin. Okay, so what does withdrawal feel like? All of the above, but that first 72 hours are dialed up to about a 10. Hallucinations, fever, your stomach will churn with a ferocity that feels like an alien has taken up residence and is trying to escape, you can feel your heart pounding with an intensity you're confident it's not meant to sustain, all the while your adamant that the pain will only ever end if you shoot up again. Postponing this withdrawal agony is a much better alternative to the agony itself. Being a lover of a good possession-film, I would describe my experiences with withdrawal as heroin being this tan-colored entity that has taken my veins and wrapped them tightly around all of my organs to the point that only a trickle of blood-flow is possible, but every nerve-ending is writhing in complete despair. The process of withdrawal is an invisible force pulling at those cancerous, miles-long tethers suffocating your organs to free your body of it's demon. Tolerable, it is not in any regard, but it's a passage you must transgress to survive without heroin. With any chaotic surrender to addiction, like cancer, you are never really free of it's embrace. Your brain has been rewired to accept it's invitation, and despite all you have endured, it's that guilty pleasure you deserve, and your contract with heroin clearly states that it's a relationship you will have in perpetuity, until in death do you part. 

This is my journey; I could say, fortunate; utopian maybe. I am after all, sitting here writing this. However, in the subsequent collapse of that world, I remain with an addiction that forages for fixes among a forest of lethality; bargaining with strangers to take heed with my mere existence in exchange for $20. For the most part, it's been a barter I've avoided for the better part of twenty-ish years, absolving myself of want in exchange for family. Now without such confines, I find the wander into the forest unforgiving. Lying in a hospital bed after nearly dying from fentanyl poisoning; toxicity coursing like a welder's flame through my veins; I wonder if any reason of rejection is an invitation to try and die. Is it romantic to have barely lived the life I was given? Will I be simply nameless to the unobserved? Have I lived a legacy worthy of artists I embraced; no, of course not. I am simply a flawed human being that did what millions of others have done with an arrogance that belongs to equally flawed humans that survived erasure from history because somehow they mattered more than you and I. When I go home, hopefully later today, god-willing, I will do so vexxed by humility, in a vessel torn to shreds, with no thought of my stupidity or carelessness - but of a desire to find that utopian-revisit to my vampire. She has not yet consumed my flesh, and for an addict, that's confirmation of an open-invitation to her embrace. The love she offers is toxic, but the greater pain is to be without her. 

 

2024 (Part Two)

 When you start articulating your thoughts to share with an invisible audience, the narrator in your head begins unravelling the absurdity of your situation. It's the sort of revelation that nourishes the self-loathing cycle into interminable scenarios that only cease with sleep.

Before I make an effort to clarify yesterday's post, there's a handful of things I didn't write that I think should be noted. If I, or anyone else, one day wants to fill in some blanks about me, understanding that my heart was heavy and over-extended was only part of my year's dialogue. Maybe, still broke, still unhealthy was a broad enough swathe that I don't need to say more. Anyone that knows my past maybe can fill in some blanks. Truth is, a couple of people could piece together my 2024 and essentially have enough of the shards to facsimilate a reflection. The outside view, looking in, is to a 52-year-old, mentally unwell individual with autistic traits. This is the perception I believe others have of me, that I really struggle with. I'm aware of this whenever I send a message to someone; or whenever I speak out of turn; and what may be an oddity to my co-workers is surely something else entirely to those I choose as friends. Ron = an untethered fall into narcissism and self-loathing.

June was a particularly bad spell. I ridiculously anchored my joy onto a "promise" that it was going to be a birthday where I was celebrated in a way that I would feel. Mentally, with having no personal reference to build a foundation from, concocted some sort of film-esque day out with this person where we laughed, adventured, and perpetuated those imaginary concepts of good friends on a play date. Instead, I found myself three hours from home, lost, drug-sick, and scared to a point nearing paranoia. I didn't see my friend that day, and I felt like I was barely an after-thought to her plans. An oft-repeated cycle without reliance on a syringe or strangers. That is not to say, there haven't been surrogates.

More than once this year; my doctor positioned me into either addressing the cutting, or placing me into a circumstance where someone will correct it. An infection early in the year unfurled into a scavenger hunt for a clinic that would prescribe antibiotics without an obligatory reading of the charges. This is not a task that is easily deliminated in rural Appalachia. The tools come out when intrusive thoughts are unrelenting, usually as an avenue to train thoughts elsewhere and hopefully sleep. I hoped, now 2+ years alone, that the reliance on these activities would subjugate to other, more creative endeavours, but if anything, the more I invest of myself into the happiness of others, the less energy and interest I have in self-care and distraction.

I did start a junk journal this year, maybe my boldest creative effort. It includes novelties and photos from my New Orleans cemetery visits. It, however, sits in a box, incomplete, uninspiring, unfathomably taxing to pick up. Cities of the Dead is, at this moment, I feel, done. The effort to drag my body to an unknown to film something died on June 1 with the last of my self-preservation. Haloes Curios is also on life-support, more because the effort to craft something I am proud of takes so much time and patience; only to be flagged, copyright-stricken, and trolled by a hateful cretin. The passion needed to muster through that process is in very short supply; it's much easier to gift that energy to someone who needs it, or I believe needs it.

So... that's a lot. A worrying lot. How does one endure themselves when every day is a gloom-parade? It really isn't that. I am guilty of fixating on the cracks, but individuals like Ethan, Bre, Morgan, Pedro, Tucker, Bethy - they've provided bridges across dark chasms. I'm much too reliant on those trestles. My selfishness and narcissism are concerning. Having spent so much of my life on that bank of the river where your only value is what you provide to another, I am not ambivalent to the realization that I ask a lot more from the people in my life than I am providing in return. It's at these crossroads where I turn to gift-giving to show my love and respect, because a "thank you" feels inadequate.

Moving into a wider focus, somehow half of our country felt safe enough to elect a rapist, felon, and compulsive liar to protect our country and it's inhabitants. There is likely no greater reminder that half of the people you know are more angry about egg prices than the existential threat to the life and safety of gay people, non-conforming identities, immigrants, Americans that don't look like "Americans", free-thinking, journalism, justice, the planet. Half of America opted for hateful and terrifying imagery over a hopeful message of unity. If that doesn't make you scared, you should be concerned about who you are and what your values are. No, of course I don't feel confident that somehow the fractured remains of norms and the constitution can somehow survive another four years of constant effort to break them, and that somehow our country will return to it's regularly scheduled program afterwards. All of the machinations are in place to change the future of our democracy forever; complicity has been the rallying cry of the GOP for eight years, and they will absolutely lie down when the weight is at it's heaviest; and why anyone thinks otherwise seems delusional to me. What is the evidence that somehow justice or our democracy will prevail despite the efforts to dismantle them?

Concerts: I didn't see many. The Chameleons was the big one, an incredible night. But I also saw Steph Green with Duff Thompson, and Thala Zedek. I should have seen Mr. Gnome, but Hurricane Helene had other ideas.

I think that's everything I wanted to say. Well, no, it wasn't. It will likely be months before I return here; until then I suppose?